Who was Nahel M, the 17-year-old whose death by police shot sparked a wave of protests in France

The death of Nahel M by a police shot on Tuesday sparked riots in cities across Franceas well as in Nanterre, the town west of Paris where he grew up.

Aged 17, he was an only child raised by his mother, worked as a food delivery boy and played rugby.

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His educational process was described as “chaotic”. He enrolled at a university in Suresnes, not far from where he lived, to train as an electrician.

Those who knew him affirm that he was very loved in Nanterrewhere he lived with his mother, Mounia, and apparently never knew his father.

His college attendance record was poor. But he had no criminal record.

On the day of the incident, he gave his mother a big kiss before she went to work, and told her: “I love you, mom.”

Shortly after nine in the morning, he was fatally shot in the chest, at point-blank range, at the wheel of a Mercedes car for fleeing during a police traffic control.

“What am I going to do now?” her mother asked. “I dedicated everything to him,” she said. “I only have one, I don’t have 10 [hijos]. He was my life, my best friend.”

His grandmother spoke of him as a “good and kind boy”.

“Refusing to stop doesn’t give you a license to kill.” said the leader of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure. “All the children of the Republic have the right to justice.”

Between rugby and professional training

Thousands of people participated this Thursday in the march to demand justice for the death of Nahel. (GETTY IMAGES).

Nahel had played for the last three years for the Piratas de Nanterre rugby club and had been part of an integration program for struggling teenagers at school, run by an association called Ovale Citoyen.

The program was aimed at getting people from underprivileged areas to participate in training programs and Nahel was learning to be an electrician.

Ovale Citoyen president Jeff Puech was one of the adults who knew him best locally, having seen him just a few days ago and referring to him as a “guy who used rugby to get ahead”.

“He was someone who had the will to fit in socially and professionally, not a guy who dealt drugs or had fun with [actos de] juvenile delinquency”said Puech to le parisien.

Puech praised the “exemplary attitude” of the teenager, far from the unpleasant image that the young man has been projected on social networks.

She had met Nahel when she lived with her mother in the Vieux-Pont suburb of Nanterre before they moved into a tenement in the Pablo Picasso development.

The stigma of minorities

“The police kill”, read some posters displayed during the demonstration for the murder of Nahel. (EPA).

It has not gone unnoticed that his family was of Algerian origin: “May Allah grant him mercy,” read a banner displayed on the Paris ring road in front of the Parc des Princes stadium.

“Police violence happens every day, especially if you are Arab or black,” said a young man in another French city calling for justice for Nahel.

But the family’s lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou, said this is not about racism, but about justice.

“We have a law and a judicial system that protects police officers and creates a culture of impunity in France”he told the BBC.

Nahel had been the subject of up to five police checks since 2021, what is known as “refus d’obtempérer”, refusals to cooperate.

As recently as last weekend, he had reportedly been placed in detention for such a refusal and was due to appear before a juvenile court in September.

Much of the trouble he was involved in with the authorities involved automobiles.

The riots sparked by his death are a reminder to many in France of the events of 2005, when two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, were electrocuted as they ran from police after a soccer match and crashed into an electrical substation in Clichy. -sous-Bois, a suburb of Paris.

“It could have been me, it could have been my little brother,” a Clichy teenager named Mohammed told the French website Mediapart.

Paul Kirby

BBCNews

Source: Elcomercio